1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to systems and methods for monitoring health care workers' compliance with required hand hygiene practices when installing and/or utilizing a catheter assembly (intravenous venous catheter) associated with patients who may be adversely affected by non-sanitized health-care workers.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The Center for Disease Control, advocates there are over 2 million preventable healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occurring each year in U.S. Hospitals resulting in billions of dollars in additional healthcare costs. The primary source of the majority of deaths from these infections is Central Line Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLBSI's). CLBSI's are considered preventable by the CDC through proper hand hygiene and sanitary management of the intravenous catheter.
An intravenous catheter (also known as a central line catheter) is a catheter (tube) that doctors often place in a large vein in the neck, chest or groin to give medication or fluids or to collect blood for medical tests. Intravenous catheters may also be known as IV's that are frequently used to give medicine or fluids into a vein near the skins surface (usually on the arm or hand), for short periods of time. Central lines catheters are commonly used in intensive care units as intravenous catheters used to access a major vein that is close to the heart and can remain in place for weeks or months. All patient associated catheters to include but not limited to Intravenous catheters, Central line catheters, Indwelling catheters, IV lines, and PICC (Peripherally Inserted Catheter) lines are to be considered the same regarding the scope of this application. In addition, Folly catheters, medical drains and physiologic catheters to include intravenous lines for adding or removing bodily fluids are to be included in the intent of providing a means for monitoring hygiene and contact with patient catheters and are intended to fall within the scope of this art.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,882,278 describes another system that monitors compliance with recommended hand-washing practices. The system includes a hand-washing detector and an event detector such as a motion detector that detects an event such a person entering or leaving a room. A control unit determines whether a person has washed his hands within a predetermined time period before entering the room.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,727,818 and 6,975,231 disclose other systems for promoting hygienic practices. The first mentioned patent discloses a system that tracks the movements of health care workers throughout the facility and within a patient's room. The health care workers are provided with badges that transmit ID information to sensors located in the hallways and rooms of the facility, which in turn transmit location information to a master station. ID information is also transmitted to wash sink sensors to indicate whether the health care worker has washed his hands. If the health care worker enters a patient contact zone in the patient's room without having complied with the required hand washing procedure, an alert is provided by the health care worker's badge and/or other alerting devices located on the patient's bed or in the patient's room.
A time delay may be employed before a warning alert is provided so that an alert is not triggered by a health care worker who is only briefly in the patient contact zone. U.S. Pat. No. 6,975,231 discloses a system employing sets of detectors located just outside and within a patient's room. These detectors are actuated sequentially as a person enters the room and the time between their actuation is monitored in determining whether a person has entered the room. A determination is made as to whether the person has washed his hands within a predetermined period of time, and a warning signal is generated if the hands have not been washed within the set period.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,090,155 Lacey discloses the use of a camera to monitor the hands so as to determine hand washing activity but does not provide a means to address the issue of identifying whose hands are being monitored and their relationship to the patient.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2011/027740, 8,110,047 8,094,029, 20050248461, 8,085,155, 7,898,407, 7,855,651, 7,818,083 7,682,464, 7,605,704, 7,375,640 and 7,372,367 hygiene monitoring schemes all require the use of RFID badges. The application of RFID as the backbone of almost all currently available hygiene monitoring systems ignores the restrictive nature presented by this technology. RFID limitations become apparent when considering the absence of an RFID badge being carried by a caregiver, Health Care Worker or visitor allows the potential hygiene violator to then become invisible to the associated monitoring system. The use of radio waves opposed to digital imaging as a means of determining location and proximity, are subject to inconsistencies in ranging dependent on many outside variables, particularly in a RF “noisy” hostile hospital environment. Radiating in a fixed circular or elliptical pattern, the application of such radio waves or IR beams opposed to digital imaging for near proximity monitoring is extremely limited in resolving “the finite point of care”, the actual probable contamination point between the HCW or visitor and the patient's medical devices.